University of Tubingen, Germany

Curator and author

Otto E. Rössler (b. in Berlin, Germany, May 20, 1940) became an amateur radio operator (DL 9KF) at the age of 17. He finished his medical studies with an immunological dissertation in Tubingen in 1966. Dr. Rössler then began as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Bavaria. In 1969, he won a visiting appointment at the Center for Theoretical Biology at SUNY-Buffalo. In 1970-73, he got a habilitation from the DFG. In 1976, he became a tenured University Docent. In 1979, he became Professor for Theoretical Biochemistry at the University of Tübingen. In 1994, he became Professor of Chemistry by decree.

In 1975, Art Winfree initiated him into chaos. One year later he published his paper on the "simplest" chaotic attractor (as Ed Lorenz later put it). Three years after, hyperchaos followed, which was equally simple. He is a member of the Santa Fe Institute and a fellow of the International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics. In 2003, he received the Chaos Award of the University of Liège and in 2003 the René Descartes Award. In 1999 he obtained a honorary doctorate from the International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics.